


One Day At a Time

by Missy



Category: Psych
Genre: Bars and Pubs, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Internalized Homophobia, Male-Female Friendship, Queer Families, Self-Acceptance, Stereotypes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 17:01:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Carlton fights with his stepmother Althea, he turns to Juliet for understanding.  But Jules has a few problems with Carlton's preconceived notions, of both Althea and himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Day At a Time

When Juliet O’Hara responded to the late-night call of her best friend, she did not expect to be directed to a dive bar several miles up the street from the love nest Carlton shared with his wife Marlowe.

“What happened?” she worried, rushing toward the bar, impressed by the size of the shiner he sported.

“Althea and I had a little spat,” he glowered.

“Did you make another LPGA joke?”

“No, I did not,” he glared. “Althea called my taste in music sophomoric, so I…”

“…you didn’t make a cheap Indigo Girls joke, did you?”

“No, of course not!” Carlton huffed. “I made a Janis Ian joke.”

Juliet slapped her own forehead in total dismay. “Carlton!”

“Don’t pout at me!” he glowered right back. “Althea was behaving combatively again. I had two choices, O’Hara – either vent my stress through sarcasm or run into the night screaming like a –“

“Maniac?” Juliet asked.

“I was going to say ‘like Spencer’, but I’m not in the mood to make a huge scene.” She slapped his elbow and he pulled back, cringing. “I don’t know why Althea can’t be a better sport about it.” He chuckled to himself. “You’d think that twenty years of playing on a semi-pro team would toughen her hyde.” 

“Are you listening to yourself?” Juliet wondered.

“Oh, O’Hara, please be reasonable. Do you know how awkward it would be to mace my own stepmother?” he shuddered. 

“I meant the way you talk to people!” she blurted out. “Especially to women.”

He sat up straighter, his tie a ramrod dividing line down the middle of his chest. “I have no idea what you’re trying to imply.”

Juliet’s eyes narrowed, and Carlton’s adam’s apple bobbed as he kept eye contact “I’m trying to point out that you have a way of looking at women – and sometimes at men – that’s stereotypical.”

Lassiter glared at his wedding ring, the gleam of it shining low in the bar’s “And you’ve been a detective long enough to know that you have to prove your case to the jury. Give me times, places, and dates.”

Juliet’s nose scrunched in thought, but as her mind processed the question her eyes lit up. “Javier from Jamba Juice,” she offered up. 

His eyes narrowed. “Really, O’Hara?”

“You’ve called him Fruity Javi from day one,” she said primly. “And why? Because he wears tropical prints and has an earring.” 

Carlton’s features wrinkled. “I’m completely justified in calling him that. He looks like a fruit.”

“No, he doesn’t,” she frowned. “He looks like a guy who blends yogurt into fruit. Carlton, he’s got six kids, and even if he was a ‘fruit’, who cares? He makes great tiger milk.” Lassiter’s response was a grumble. “Look at Althea; if you saw her walking down the street, would you look at her and say to yourself ‘that woman’s a lesbian?”

That was quite a fair question on Juliet’s part, and it sank him into a temporary torpor. It wasn’t that Carlton meant to be rude in a conscious way, he was just incredibly aware of what his life was like B.A.: Before Althea. Once upon a time his mother might have considered going back to Carlton’s father, and once upon a time his every little whim was met, and those days passed away when Altha and his mother had hooked up. “Wow, Juliet, I never thought of my crippling childhood emotional pain that way before!”

“…Crippling?” Juliet asked.

“No,” he said with extravagant emphasis. “Not crippling.” He squeezed his fingers tightly together around the bottle of beer.

“If it means anything to you,” said Juliet, “I don’t think you’re always homophobic. It’s like you have this switch in your brain, and when people trigger it you go off. It’s how you deal with life. I knw you don’t believe me, but you’ve internalized a lot of crap to become…well…you. In this case, it’s homophobia.”

“Oh come on – to have that, you have to be gay first, Juliet,” he growled.

“Maybe you’re a bisexual.”

He choked on his beer.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with how you feel about your wife. Think of Marlowe and how she makes you feel. Then imagine her with a penis.”

“Oh GOD…”

“And tell me if it changes the way you feel about her. Would you still feel the same when she walked into the room? Would you still miss the scent of her on your skin, and the way you feel when you hold her?”

Carlton cracked open an eye. “O’Hara, have you been….”

“Marlowe and I are just friends,” she said, then sat up straighter. “Does it?”

He shook his head. “I’d miss the sound of her voice, the way she sings in the shower, how she looks at me. I love her, not her genitals…though those are spectacular.”

“Thank you, Carlton.”

He rolled his eyes. “This little chit-chat doesn’t fix the problem between Althea and myself. Try to help me with that one.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to do one last little drastic thing, Carlton.” Juliet’s smug little smile poked at Lassiter as she got up off the stool. “Talk to her.”

***

An hour later, Carlton collected his wife from the movies and brought her back to his mother’s apartment. Before “Althea, please let me explain myself.”

Althea eyeballed him, but stepped out of the way. “Shoot, but you’ve got five minutes until Xena comes on.”

Carlton then said, “You and my mother happened at a crucial time in my life. I was a very sensitive, fragile young man,” he said, wrapping an arm around Marlowe’s stiff shoulders. “I wasn’t very accepting of the divorce and I took it out on you, and for that, I’m sorry.”

Carlton’s mother smiled at Althea indulgently. “Aren’t you going to thank Carlton?”

“Yeah, thank you for pulling the splinter out of my eye while ignoring the log you jammed up my…”

“Althea, PLEASE.” 

Althea locked eyes with Carlton but she didn’t budge. “Well. Aren’t you going to drag out the LPGA jokes now?”

Marlowe nudged Carlton. “Althea,” he said grandly, “I know what it’s like to be in love now. I know what it is to love someone, no matter who or what they were before you knew them. You’ve been married to my mother, in spirit for twenty years and on paper for two. While I don’t always support the IDEA of your relationship, it’s obvious that my mother finds it pleasing…”

“You’re damn right,” said Althea, as Carlton grimaced.

“And since she’s happy, I will try to be happy for you.”

Althea paused, eyeballing her stepson. After a moment’s thought, she softened slightly. “One day at a time, honey,” she sighed, moving out of the way so that he could enter the apartment.

**Author's Note:**

> The characters portrayed in this work of fiction are they property of **USA Network**. They were not used with an intent to profit, nor was any money made off of it.


End file.
